Conservatives loathe “big government.” I mean, they hate it with a passion. But their antipathy for big government is manufactured from a false pretense that larger government leads to smaller individual liberty. It’s hard to believe something as complex as the United States government, in a country with a population over 300 million, could be boiled down to a zero sum game of government vs. liberty, but that’s conservative logic for ya.

There is a lot of Republican right-wing misinformation about the state of the economy and private sector job growth. And breathtaking in their ineptitude are conservatives who believe President Obama is presiding over a net private sector job loss economy. This simply is untrue. I don’t say this because it’s my opinion, I say it because the data gathered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows net private sector job growth since January 2009 of almost 2.6 million jobs. It’s not something that can be disputed because we have actual data and record keeping. It’s information that anybody can research, but it requires a lot less conjecture and a little more work, which might produce a result that would not comport to right-wing narratives.

Apparently we demand more from others than we do of ourselves. Those of us who are fortunate enough to have good paying jobs need to do a lot less critiquing of those who work low paying – and necessary — service jobs.

If there is one thing in the debate over climate change that irks me the most, well, after climate change deniers, it’s the false choice of jobs or the environment. Even if addressing climate change meant the loss of thousands or millions of jobs, that would not be a valid reason to do nothing. Yeah, you read that correctly. Let’s simply face facts. We are all selfish about our wants and our needs compared to the wants and needs of future generations. But as recent climate-fueled events like Hurricane Sandy have shown us, not only are future generations at risk, our future is at risk.

When you see an article titled (“73% of New Jobs Created in Last 5 Months Are in Government“) you know you need to take a deep breath and say aloud “serenity now.” Because anybody who has paid attention to the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports over the past months and years knows that the public sector (i.e. “government”) has shed jobs almost every month in the aftermath of the Great Recession. And if you wish to maintain your sanity, I advise you to steer clear of that article’s comments section.

A New York Post column (“The 49ers“) laments the potential job losses as a result of full implementation of “Obamacare.” The use of the term “Obamacare” in place of “Affordable Care Act” should be your first tip-off of what’s to come. The article’s author is Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, which is a libertarian think tank. That should be your second tip-off.